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Recently, I was working on a solution which required a scheduled download of a hosted file. There are a few samples floating around online of how to do an FTP download/upload, but I figured I would share what I've been using as it is incredibly simple and does the job perfectly.

We utilize WebClient and NetworkCredential, so the System.Net namespace is required. Then, we just supply credentials and call either the DownloadFile() or UploadFile() method which require the source and destination folders - that's it! Below are examples of each.

During the Quick Create Form’s save event, let’s say you have some JavaScript validation code and you want to use the fully-supported “preventDefault” to cancel the save if validation fails. In CRM 2016, you’ll notice that the Save button remains disabled, leaving the user no choice but to close the form and start over again. This bug means that you have to either set up the Quick Create in such a way that validation is not necessary or you’ll need to handle all validation during the “On Change” events, rather than “On Save.”

As companies look to better understand their sales prospects and current customers, they often turn their focus on to their sales and marketing funnels. How to generate more leads, how to score leads more accurately and marketing personalization are frequent topics of discussion and fine-tuning. The goal is easily described, but can be challenging to meet: how to turn prospects into customers and customers into brand advocates. One solution to this end is marketing automation.

Marketing automation helps you achieve tasks with minimal effort. It gives business owners opportunities to better manage their relationships with known prospects and current or even inactive customers. Implementing an automated marketing system allows your company to consistently and effectively communicate with a customer and prospect database based on their individual interests and past interactions.

ADX provides a powerful way to render CRM forms directly on websites. One thing that is not being supported by ADX is the application of business rules, especially the ones that trigger real time changes in the UI. One example is the dynamic appearance/disappearance of UI elements based on the value of a form field. The lack of support makes ADX forms relatively static when we use them out of the box.

Marketing automation will add considerable value to a sales rep’s process. Sales professionals can tailor their activities to be more relevant to the buyer’s interest, which means sales teams can convert more leads to revenue. Introducing a marketing automation system will also allow your sales team to focus their time more efficiently, leaving the slower prospects to marketing automation’s lead nurturing capabilities.

Thorough testing is key to delivering quality software to our customers. In the software development sphere, we invest time and money to create test plans, suites, cases and scripts. Within these documents, we note the details that need to be verified based on the system features being delivered, providing a great cornerstone for our testing efforts.

Beyond the planning and the documents, though, great testing requires a tester who will:

Usually, when filtering data from a database or a collection, you are comparing one or two values to a list of many. However, with a recent application, I found myself needing to filter a list of items using another list. The movies in Figure 1 below provides a good example.

We deliver the complete integration and development of sales, marketing and customer service technologies. TopLine Strategies’ project management is designed to achieve 100 percent user adoption of the technologies implemented, and deliver measurable returns on investment for clients.

Whether our clients are searching for an expert firm to analyze and execute a critical project, employees to augment an information technology team or contractors to assist with technology needs, we deliver on-time, cost-effective solutions that optimize client results. Over the years, our methods have remained the same: establish long-term relationships, assess requirements, research and analyze options, recommend appropriate solutions, implement, integrate and optimize performance.

We deliver the complete integration and development of sales, marketing and customer service technologies. TopLine Strategies’ project management is designed to achieve 100 percent user adoption of the technologies implemented, and deliver measurable returns on investment for clients.

Whether our clients are searching for an expert firm to analyze and execute a critical project, employees to augment an information technology team or contractors to assist with technology needs, we deliver on-time, cost-effective solutions that optimize client results. Over the years, our methods have remained the same: establish long-term relationships, assess requirements, research and analyze options, recommend appropriate solutions, implement, integrate and optimize performance.